The warm weather is here early this season and your instinct is to get out and clean up your garden and the leftover leaves you missed in the Fall.  While you get ready for Spring there are many native pollinators that are still dormant waiting for a few more weeks when our weather is consistently in the 50s.   This is when native pollinators will take flight and get busy working to build up their colonies.   Sure the honey bees are flying but they have a much different survival methodology than our native pollinators.
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If you are cleaning up your garden due so carefully.   Here are some hints that we tell gardeners to follow:

• Leave the large stalks that are still in your garden alone.  The stalk of a sunflower plant is a great example of a plant you may want to hold off on composting until later in the season.
• Focus on areas that are low traffic for native pollinator hibernators.  These will be areas that are mostly shade and very wet.  Most native pollinators that hibernate in the ground will look for sunnier and drier spots.
• Don't wood chip that deadfall tree.   A dead tree with lots of holes in it will likely be home to numerous pollinators including Mason bees and Carpenter bees.  
• Identify native pollinator communities.  At Applecrest Farm in Hampton Falls, there is a massive community of orchard bees that congregate in the same area each Spring and we have been watching them do this for over 10 years now.  This part of the farm has been populated with apple trees for hundreds of years and these pollinators have been helping to pollinate them year after year.
• Garden carefully and if you find a dormant pollinator put it back where you found it.  If you are not sure where it came from find a warm spot in the garden and place the bee under some protective layer of leaves or garden material.  Why the pollinator may appear lethargic or dead is likely in a state of hibernation.
• Wait for a long stretch of days over 50 degrees to start working the garden soil.  Another good time to start is when you see a bumblebee flying.  

We hope these tips can help you start your gardening for 2022 off on the right foot.  Please feel free to contact us if you have any pollinator questions.  

Buckwheat has to be one of my favorite plants for pollinators and while I may like it, the bees love it.   I have had luck growing it myself as a cover crop, one year at the Goss Farm in Rye, NH, and have been lucky to work with farmers like Jack Clarke in Epping/Lee who planted it as part of his crop rotation.  A few years ago, I was driving by the Governor Dale Farm in North Hampton when I saw a massive crop just starting to flower and I just needed to stop and ask if I could place some hives there.  Josh the farmer had planted it as a cover crop and I received his permission as well as the ok from the owners of the land (Jacqui and Hank).   We were able to get some good buckwheat flavors from that honey but not a mono-floral harvest that was solely buckwheat.   This past year, Josh planted another cover crop and the bees were able to store away some frames of the dark nectar that was mostly buckwheat honey.

Buckwheat (Fagopyrum esculentum) has been around for a long time and is not a native plant to North America.  It originated in Asia and spread to Europe and eventually was brought to the Americas by the Europeans.  Here in the Northeast of the United States it was once a common crop but has been replaced by other grain crops like corn and soybean.  The buckwheat plant produces a white flower that eventually produces a triangular seed that looks a bit like a colonial hat.  The seed is easy to collect and can be ground into flour.  

Buckwheat plants are quick to grow and will in about 10 weeks.  When the flower has blossomed the plant will put out nectar for only a short duration of the day.   We have observed this at many of our locations where the bees will work the crop in the morning for nectar and the afternoon for pollen only. The bees have no choice since the plant is the one shutting down the nectar flow.   When the bees collect enough nectar they bring it back to the hive and store it in the honeycomb where it goes through the process of becoming honey.  In most cases, that honey is mixed in with other late-season nectars like goldenrod, aster, purple loosestrife, and knotweed.  The combination of these nectars makes for very dark and rich honey that you will find in our late summer bottles.  In rare cases, we have frames of exclusive buckwheat you will find that the honey is extremely dark and has a rich molasses-like flavor with some straw-like after notes.  Some people actually will get a barnyard type of smell/taste from their experience.  I can see that but more often I prefer the description I hear when people try it is malty.  I love people's reactions when they try this honey after we have tried much lighter ones and worked our way up to it. 

Are you looking to plant buckwheat this season?  If you need any pollinators to help the crop please reach out to us and we can see about dropping a hive off to help you with your crop.